Parents\u27 and students\u27 perceptions of college alcohol risk: the role of parental risk perception in intentions to communicate about alcohol

Introduction: The current study aims to examine discrepancies in parents\u27 and college students\u27 perceptions of alcohol risk and the role of perceived risk in predicting parents\u27 intentions to discuss alcohol with their child. Methods: In total, 246 college student–parent dyads (56.1% female students, 77.2% mothers) were recruited from a mid-size university. Participants completed measures of absolute likelihood, comparative likelihood, and severity of alcohol consequences. Results: In comparison to students, parents perceived the risks of alcohol poisoning (p \u3c .001), academic impairment (p \u3c .05), and problems with others (p \u3c .05) to be more likely. In addition, parents rated the majority of alcohol consequences (e.g., passing out, regrettable sexual situation, throwing up) as more severe than students (all ps \u3c .001). However, parents tended to be more optimistic than their child about the comparative likelihood of alcohol consequences. After controlling for demographics and past alcohol communication, greater absolute likelihood (β = .20, p = .016) and less confidence in knowledge of student behavior (β = .20, p = .013) predicted greater intentions to discuss alcohol. Conclusions: Providing parents of college students with information about college drinking norms and the likelihood of alcohol consequences may help prompt alcohol-related communication

Predicting Driving After Drinking Over Time Among College Students: The Emerging Role of Injunctive Normative Perceptions

Objective: Despite prevention efforts, driving after drinking (DAD) is a prevalent high-risk behavior among college students and is a leading cause of death and injury. Examination of factors predicting future DAD behavior is necessary to develop efficacious targeted interventions to reduce this behavior among college students. The current study evaluated demographic, social cognitive, and behavioral predictors of DAD using longitudinal data. Method: Participants were 655 nonabstaining college students (67.2% female; 60.3% White; Mage = 19.3 years) who completed online surveys at two time points 12 months apart. Results: Results revealed that participants consistently overestimated their peers’ approval (injunctive norms) of DAD. In a three-step hierarchical logistic regression model, injunctive norms, age, and past DAD behavior uniquely contributed to the prediction of this behavior 12 months later. Neither sex nor membership in a sorority or fraternity emerged as significant predictors. Conclusions: The findings provide important new insights into the longitudinal predictors of DAD among college students and highlight the need for DAD interventions, particularly among older students

Normative Feedback for Parents of College Students: Piloting a Parent Based Intervention to Correct Misperceptions of Students’ Alcohol Use and Other Parents’ Approval of Drinking

Objective Multi-component parent-based interventions (PBIs) provide a promising avenue for targeting alcohol use and related consequences in college students. Parents of college-aged children can have a significant influence on their children’s alcohol use decisions. However, parents tend to underestimate their own child’s alcohol use and overestimate other similar parents’ approval of student drinking. These misperceptions could have important implications for parents’ own attitudes and alcohol-related communication with their student. Targeting these misperceptions through normative feedback could help promote greater and more in-depth alcohol-related communication. The present study examines the potential efficacy of web-based alcohol-related normative feedback for parents of college students. Method A sample of 144 parents of college students received web-based normative feedback about students’ alcohol use and approval, as well as other same-college parents’ alcohol approval. Parents completed measures of perceived student alcohol use, student alcohol approval, other-parent alcohol approval, and intentions to discuss alcohol use both pre- and post-normative feedback. Results Post-feedback, parents reported stronger intentions to talk to their student about alcohol, were less confident in their knowledge of their students’ alcohol use, and believed that their student drank in greater quantity and more frequently than pre-feedback. Parents also perceived other parents to be less approving of alcohol use after viewing normative feedback. Conclusions These findings provide preliminary support for the use of web-based normative feedback for parents of college students. Given these promising results, further research developing and testing this approach merits attention

Event-specific risk and ecological factors associated with prepartying among heavier drinking college students

Using event-specific data, the present study sought to identify relevant risk factors and risky drinking patterns associated with prepartying. Analyses focused on drinking outcomes as a function of drinking game playing and the social context on occasions where prepartying did and did not occur. This research utilized a representative two-site sample of prepartiers who also reported a heavy episodic drinking event in the past month (n = 988). Results revealed that during a preparty event, participants drank significantly more, reached higher blood alcohol levels (BALs), and experienced significantly more negative consequences compared to the last occasion that they drank but did not preparty. Students who played drinking games when they prepartied had higher BALs and experienced more negative consequences than those who did not play drinking games. Whether females prepartied in a single-sex or coed setting had little effect on their BALs. For males, however, their BALs were greater when they prepartied in a coed setting compared to a single sex setting. Moreover, participants reported more negative consequences when they prepartied in a coed setting than in a single-sex setting. Finally, regression analyses demonstrated that participants’ BAL, frequency of prepartying, and the interaction between BAL and frequency of prepartying all uniquely contributed to the prediction of event-specific alcohol-related negative consequences. As BAL increased, the number of negative consequences increased more sharply for those who prepartied infrequently, compared to those who prepartied frequently. Analyses were examined as a function of gender which revealed important gender effects and interactions. Interventions can be designed to intervene with high-risk prepartiers by using BAL education emphasizing the impact of time-limited prepartying drinking

Impulsivity and Alcohol-Related Risk among College Students: Examining Urgency, Sensation Seeking and the Moderating Influence of Beliefs about Alcohol\u27s Role in the College Experience

The personality trait of impulsivity is predictive of heavy drinking and consequences among college students. The current study examined how impulsivity—measured via positive urgency, negative urgency, and sensation seeking—and a person\u27s beliefs about the role alcohol plays in the college experience relate to drinking and consequences in a sample of 470 college students (mean age = 19 years, 61.3% female, 59.8% white). In support of hypotheses, sensation seeking independently predicted greater drinking, and both positive and negative urgency predicted greater experience of alcohol-related negative consequences after controlling for consumption level. Moreover, alcohol beliefs moderated the relationship between impulsivity types and alcohol outcomes. Among students high (versus low) in sensation seeking, strong beliefs about alcohol\u27s role in college life were related to significantly greater drinking, and among students high (versus low) in negative urgency, endorsing strong beliefs about alcohol\u27s role in college life were related to greater levels of alcohol-related negative consequences. Overall, findings inform college prevention efforts by highlighting the need to distinguish unique facets of impulsivity and examine how they intersect with students’ beliefs about alcohol in college

Transitions of tethered polymer chains: A simulation study with the bond fluctuation lattice model

A polymer chain tethered to a surface may be compact or extended, adsorbed or desorbed, depending on interactions with the surface and the surrounding solvent. This leads to a rich phase diagram with a variety of transitions. To investigate these transitions we have performed Monte Carlo simulations of a bond-fluctuation model with Wang-Landau and umbrella sampling algorithms in a two-dimensional state space. The simulations' density of states results have been evaluated for interaction parameters spanning the range from good to poor solvent conditions and from repulsive to strongly attractive surfaces. In this work, we describe the simulation method and present results for the overall phase behavior and for some of the transitions. For adsorption in good solvent, we compare with Metropolis Monte Carlo data for the same model and find good agreement between the results. For the collapse transition, which occurs when the solvent quality changes from good to poor, we consider two situations corresponding to three-dimensional (hard surface) and two-dimensional (very attractive surface) chain conformations, respectively. For the hard surface, we compare tethered chains with free chains and find very similar behavior for both types of chains. For the very attractive surface, we find the two-dimensional chain collapse to be a two-step transition with the same sequence of transitions that is observed for three-dimensional chains: a coil-globule transition that changes the overall chain size is followed by a local rearrangement of chain segments.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, to appear in J. Chem. Phy

A Cross-Lagged Panel Model Examining Protective Behavioral Strategies: Are Types of Strategies Differentially Related to Alcohol Use and Consequences?

Protective behavioral strategies (PBS) are skills that can be used to reduce the of risk alcohol-related negative consequences. Studies have shown that, in general, PBS are related to less alcohol consumption and fewer negative consequences; however, other studies have suggested that not all types of PBS (e.g., stopping/limiting drinking [SLD], manner of drinking [MOD] and serious harm reduction [SHR]) are equally effective at reducing alcohol risk. In addition, few studies have explored the longitudinal relationships among PBS, alcohol use and consequences. Using a sample of heavy drinking college students (N = 338), the current study examined PBS use, alcohol consumption and consequences across two time points three months apart. Cross-lagged panel models revealed that MOD predicted a reduction in alcohol use and negative consequences. SHR was longitudinally related to fewer negative consequences, but unrelated to alcohol use. SLD was not associated with drinking or consequences at follow-up. These results highlight the need for future research to examine the effects of different types of PBS and have implications for alcohol intervention programs that incorporate PBS skills training

Gender as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Preparty Motives and Event-Level Consequences

Prepartying is often associated with increased alcohol consumption and negative alcohol-related consequences among college students. General drinking motives are often only weakly related to preparty alcohol use, and few studies have examined the associations between preparty-specific drinking motives and alcohol-related consequences that occur during or after a preparty event. The current study utilizes event-level data to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between four types of preparty motives (prepartying to relax or loosen up, to increase control over alcohol use, to meet a dating partner, and to address concerns that alcohol may not be available later) and alcohol consequences as a function of gender. Participants (N = 952) reported on their most recent preparty event in the past month. After controlling for general drinking motives, all four preparty motives predicted greater event-level consequences for both males and females. Further, prepartying to increase control over alcohol consumed was associated with greater consequences for males as compared to females. The findings are consistent with research suggesting that preparty specific motives may further our understanding of prepartying outcomes over and above the use of general drinking motive measures

Individual differences in self-affirmation: distinguishing self-affirmation from positive self-regard

Research into self-affirmation has almost exclusively employed experimental manipulations. In this paper we address individual differences in the tendency to respond to threats with self-affirming cognitions and distinguish this from two overlapping constructs: habitual positive self-thought and trait self-esteem. Items we designed to measure self-affirmation were represented by three first-order factors and loaded on a higher-order factor, creating the Spontaneous Self-Affirmation Measure (SSAM). The SSAM correlated moderately with self-esteem and habitual positive self-thought. In competitive analyses, the SSAM was an independent predictor of a large number of outcomes. The studies provide evidence about the correlates of individual differences in reported spontaneous self-affirmation in response to threat and the contribution made to this response by habitual positive self-thought and trait self-esteem

Partially directed paths in a wedge

The enumeration of lattice paths in wedges poses unique mathematical challenges. These models are not translationally invariant, and the absence of this symmetry complicates both the derivation of a functional recurrence for the generating function, and solving for it. In this paper we consider a model of partially directed walks from the origin in the square lattice confined to both a symmetric wedge defined by $Y = \pm pX$, and an asymmetric wedge defined by the lines $Y= pX$ and Y=0, where $p > 0$ is an integer. We prove that the growth constant for all these models is equal to $1+\sqrt{2}$, independent of the angle of the wedge. We derive functional recursions for both models, and obtain explicit expressions for the generating functions when $p=1$. From these we find asymptotic formulas for the number of partially directed paths of length $n$ in a wedge when $p=1$. The functional recurrences are solved by a variation of the kernel method, which we call the ``iterated kernel method''. This method appears to be similar to the obstinate kernel method used by Bousquet-Melou. This method requires us to consider iterated compositions of the roots of the kernel. These compositions turn out to be surprisingly tractable, and we are able to find simple explicit expressions for them. However, in spite of this, the generating functions turn out to be similar in form to Jacobi $\theta$-functions, and have natural boundaries on the unit circle.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to JCT